NYC Health Dept. Officially Rolls Out Teen Reproductive Health App

The "Teens in New York City Protection+" app from the City of New York. (Credit: City of New York)

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — As part of a campaign against teen pregnancy, New York City health officials are promoting a smartphone app that will help teenagers locate clinics that can answer questions about sex, prescribe birth control, test for HIV or even provide an abortion.

Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said the app will tell teens about birth control and about what to expect at a clinic.

“The Teens in NYC mobile app provides information in ways that are familiar to teens so they have can access to these services,” Farley said. “”Teenagers are often embarrassed to talk to people about sex, especially their parents.”

The idea that the city might help children get access to contraception or locate an abortion provider is likely to dismay some parents, but Farley said that based on the past public reaction to similar programs, he didn’t expect a backlash.

“Most parents are overwhelmingly supportive,” he said.

Available on Apple and Google Android devices, the app also features sex education videos, including one about a girl who is confused about her sexual orientation. Users can also use it to locate places to get free condoms, a pregnancy test or counseling.

“We used to provide some basic information in a tiny pamphlet. But these days, the language of kids is the mobile phone,” Farley said. “Teens need this kind of information, they’re often not informed and we wanted to speak the language of teens. And teens use mobile phones these days for information so it was the best way to reach the people we want to reach.”

Overall, teen pregnancy has declined by 30 percent in the last decade in New York City, according to new data released by health officials.

Farley credited the decline partly to parents and schools being more open to discussing the risks of unprotected sex and how to best prevent unwanted pregnancies.

“The idea that we are going to shield kids from that information is long since history,” Farley said. Surveys have shown, he added, that even as the city has distributed millions of free condoms and become more direct about discussing contraception, fewer teens are sexually active than in past decades.”

Nearly 1 in 10 New York City girls between the ages of 15 to 19 had a pregnancy in 2001. By 2011, that rate had dropped to a little less than 1 in 15, the city said. That still translated into 17,000 babies born to teen mothers, the city said. About 87 percent of those pregnancies were unplanned.